THE long-running battle to find out the truth about a York council officer's "golden handshake" has been lost.

The public will NOT get to know details of the payout made to City of York Council's former commercial services director, David Finnegan, or the reason for his departure.

The Information Commissioner has ruled that the council was right to withhold documents concerning the matter.

The authority had argued that to reveal them would be a breach of the Data Protection Act - and that view was shared by the commissioner.

The ruling marks an end to a dispute between the authority and prospective councillor Terry Smith.

Mr Smith, who is standing as a Conservative candidate in next month's local elections, had submitted a Freedom of Information Act to the council in October 2005, asking how much Mr Finnegan had been paid and why he resigned his post.

Today, Mr Smith accepted the decision, saying: "I think the case has been thoroughly looked at and the council have followed the correct guidelines. I feel the Information Commissioner has come to the correct decision.

"It would have been nice to know how much taxpayers' money was paid to him, but due to the Data Protection Act and the compromise agreement between Mr Finnegan and the council, we will never know."

Mr Smith received the decision in a letter from Laura Booth, complaints officer at the Information Commissioner's Office.

She said that the council and Mr Finnegan had signed a compromise agreement at the time of his departure, including a confidentiality clause.

She wrote: "A balance has to be struck between a public authority's duty to be transparent and accountable about how and why it decided to spend public money in a particular way, and its duty to respect its employees' reasonable expectations of privacy.

"From the evidence provided to me, I have no reason to believe that disclosure of the information requested is within Mr Finnegan's reasonable expectations."

She said the information in question was Mr Finnegan's personal data, and therefore ought not to have been disclosed.

Mr Finnegan was suspended from his post as director of commercial services in August 2005, before taking early retirement two months later. The council has always insisted that the details of the case should remain private.